Cardinals Pitch Around David Ortiz, Jonny Gomes Makes Them Pay with Three-Run Blast

Jonny Gomes drilled a hanging breaking ball from Cardinals’ reliever Seth Maness to put the Red Sox up 4-1 in the sixth inning of Sunday night’s World Series game. Gomes was only in the starting lineup due to a late injury scratch to Shane Victorino.

The talking point here will be St. Louis manager Mike Matheny pitching around David Ortiz with two outs. It wasn’t an intentional walk, but Cards starter Lance Lynn walked Ortiz on four pitches and then left the game. Ortiz was 2-for-2 at that point. His first hit was a broken bat infield single, the second was a double. Papi is batting .700 in the series, while Gomes had been hitless in eight at bats. As well as Ortiz is swinging the bat, perhaps Matheny ought to have brought in a lefty rather than putting another runner on base. Even without the home run the walk moved the go-ahead run into scoring position.

Unless the Cardinals come back this will be a lot of the chatter in St. Louis about this until the first pitch of Monday night’s game. Matheny has lefties Randy Choate and Kevin Siegrist on his roster. Ortiz is 3-for-9 lifetime vs. Choate including a hit in Game 3.

Of course the true hero here for the Red Sox is Dustin Pedroia for keeping the inning alive with a gritty, two-out single over shortstop.

Cue the beard tugs!